Archive March 2005

Walter F. Parkes, who is producing Michael Bay’s upcoming SF movie The Island, told SCI FI Wire that the director brought his signature action to the project, which started as a spec script about human cloning by Caspian Tredwell-Owen. “Well, I think two things happened in development,” Parkes said in an interview during a break in filming on the movie’s set in Downey, Calif. “Absolutely … there is that signature big [action] set piece in the middle of the movie now. Not that the movie didn’t call for that. This was, at its heart, a story about characters who are on the run. So it makessense. But there were also many other issues of the story that we had to change.”

The Island stars Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson as human clones raised in a completely secure environment who discover the truth of their existence and attempt to flee, pursued in various ways by armed representatives of the company that created them.

Parks said that Bay also introduced a provocative question: Who has the right to survive, the clone or the original human? “The question arises, does the clone have as much [right] to the life out there?” Parkes said. Ultimately, Alias writers Alex Kurtzman-Counter and Roberto Orci will also receive screenplay credit on The Island.

It was DreamWorks honcho Steven Spielberg who brought Bay onto the project. “For this scale project, there is really a small list of directors, because they have to deal with action, and they have to really be able to create worlds, and those are two things that Michael’s … shown [he has the] ability to do,” Parkes said, referring to Bay’s movies, which include Pearl Harbor and Armageddon. “The other thing about Michael is, unlike a lot of modern directors, he’s an expert in physical effects, as opposed to [computer-generated] effects. His CG work is great, but what’s amazing about Michael Bay is what he can actually create that will be photographed by acamera lens.” The Island opens July 22.